by Diane Hoh
Alex went to the phone.
The nurse who answered would tell her only, “Mr. Leavitt is resting comfortably.”
Resting comfortably? What did that mean?
Well, it meant Kyle wasn’t dead. That was enough for now.
She was too tired to wait up for Jenny. Sleep…she needed sleep…
She fell into bed with her clothes on, and was asleep in minutes.
But she did not rest comfortably. Her subconscious served up a smorgasbord of horrifying images that caused Alex to thrash and moan all night long. First she saw Julie, from the back: thick, short hair shining like gold, free of bandages. Then she turned around…and she had no face. There was only an empty oval where her features should have been. It was like looking into a mirror with no glass, and Alex, in sleep, saw again the grotesque mirror the twins had wrestled over in the hospital. In her dream, she began hunting for the ugly thing, searching the hospital room, looking in the closet and in the bathroom. There was no sign of it, and no clue about where it had come from.
Then the nightmare scene changed and she was standing in the doorway of another room, a small, cold, white cubicle, with only a white table inside. A figure lay on the table, covered to its neck with a heavy black cloth. Alex didn’t want to go inside. But she was pulled in by a force stronger than herself. Closer, closer…music came from somewhere, slow and haunting, like a funeral dirge. She clapped her hands over her ears, but her legs kept moving closer and closer to the black-draped table. She could
See the chin, the nose…Kyle! Lying like stone, unmoving, unblinking, his eyes wide open, staring up at her. His skin was gray and looked as cold and smooth as marble.
Then his lips moved, and as she gasped and jumped backward, he said in a hoarse voice, “Peace and quiet, peace and quiet, I have peace and quiet, Alex.”
Kyle’s image was replaced by Gabe’s. He was rolling down the hospital corridor on a wheeled cart that sat low to the ground, like a child’s go-cart. He had no legs. “Look, Alex,” he cried happily, grinning up at her, “I’ve finally got wheels!” As she stared at him, he raced down the hall and around a corner and disappeared.
And then the face of The Wizard was gazing down at her, his blue eyes glinting, his mouth open beneath the white beard and mustache, and he threw his head back and laughed, hahahahahahaha, like the ugly pink woman Alex had hated at the amusement park. Hahahahah…
Alex jerked awake, moaning, covered in a cold sweat.
The phone rang.
It was one of the policemen. “I’ve done some checking about that football charm you found. They were given to all the freshmen when they made the football team this year. They come with a gold chain. But most of the guys probably put them away somewhere, with their high school class ring.”
Freshman football players? There were several freshmen on the team, including Marty, Gabe, and Bennett…Shivering, Alex offered, “I could ask around, see who made a practice of wearing theirs or carrying it around with them.”
“No!” he said sharply, surprising her. “Don’t talk to anyone about this. Let us handle it. And, Miss, I wouldn’t go anywhere alone. Keep friends with you or your boyfriend…”
She didn’t tell him she didn’t have a boyfriend.
When Alex hung up, a wave of uneasiness washed over her. Did she really need to keep someone with her at all times, at least until they caught the person who had attacked Kyle? They didn’t even know if he had seen her.
He didn’t, she told herself as she put on her bathrobe. I know he didn’t. I would have seen him looking at me. Wouldn’t I?
But she’d been upset, watching. Hadn’t she closed her eyes when Kyle fell? He might have looked over at her then.
Maybe? she asked herself cynically as she thrust her telltale white streak of hair up under a green felt hat. Don’t you mean probably, almost certainly, what-are-the-chances-that-he-didn’t? Isn’t that what you mean?
Jenny came out of the shower, her hair, un-toweled, dripping on the shoulders of her green robe. “You okay?” she asked Alex. “You didn’t sleep very well last night. You were fighting with your sheets and making all these weird noises.”
“Sorry.”
“That’s okay. I didn’t get in until late, anyway.” Jenny moved to the closet to pick out something to wear. “After Bennett and I found out that Kyle wasn’t going to wake up at all last night, we went for a drive. We were both pretty upset, and it was a nice night out.”
Bennett and I? They were “Bennett and I” now?
“Awful what happened to Kyle, isn’t it?” Jenny went on, her voice muted as she rummaged in the depths of the closet. “You don’t think he jumped, do you?”
I was wrong, Alex thought, sitting down on the bed. There is at least one person on campus who doesn’t know that I saw it happen. So maybe lots of people don’t know.
Without waiting for Alex’s answer to her question, Jenny continued, “Where did you disappear to, anyway? Marty was really mad that you didn’t come to the hospital with us.”
But he hadn’t come into the tower looking for her, had he? Aloud, Alex said, “I had something I had to do. And it’s not like I could have helped Kyle. He is going to be okay, isn’t he?”
“Well, no one knows yet. He’s in a coma.”
“A coma?” Alex remembered her nightmare…Kyle lying still as death, his face as cold and smooth as wax. “Will he be okay?”
“No one knows.” Jenny emerged from the closet with a gold silk blouse of Julie’s and a pair of black velvet jeans. “And no one really knows what happened. Maybe we’ll never know if he jumped or not.”
“He wouldn’t do that!” Alex snapped. She wanted to tell Jenny the truth, but the cops had been very clear about that. She had to keep quiet about what she’d seen. For now, anyway.
Jenny shrugged. “Kyle was a big football hero in high school, just like Bennett and Marty and Gabe. You know how they talk about football, like it’s the most important thing in the world. So did Kyle. He was shattered at not being a hero anymore. Maybe he was more depressed than we realized.”
Alex had to bite her tongue to keep from shouting, “He didn’t jump! Someone threw him off that tower!” She said instead, “I’m going down to see Kyle. And Julie. You coming?”
“They won’t let you see Kyle. And I already told Julie I can’t come today. I’ve…I’ve got stuff I have to do. Research. At the library, with Bennett.”
Research? In a gold silk blouse and black velvet jeans?
“I thought you’d be going today. You’ve hardly seen Julie this week.”
“She doesn’t mind. She doesn’t like people seeing her the way she is now. They took her bandages off, and she’s just got these little pieces of tape, and you can see all the stitches…” Jenny shuddered. “I don’t blame her for not wanting people around. Anyway,” she added lightly, “my parents are coming tomorrow. They’ll keep her company. They dote on her, you know. Always did.”
Jenny began experimenting with hairstyles in front of the mirror, and Alex left to take a shower.
When she came back, Jenny was gone. Her books were lying on her unmade bed.
Research without books? The only research Jenny Pierce was probably going to get done today was an analysis of Bennett Stark, ex-jock.
That was probably why Jenny hadn’t seemed devastated over what had happened to Kyle…because she was suddenly so wrapped up in Bennett. Maybe falling in love made you forget other people, at least for a while. And it must be nice for Bennett, after not being able to play football and being dumped by that girl, Shelley. At least he had a girlfriend again, one who liked him for himself instead of his letter-man’s jacket.
Jenny was right about Julie’s face. Alex had to struggle to keep from letting a gasp of horror escape when she walked into Julie’s room. The swath of white bandages had been replaced by small strips of clear adhesive. Every ugly black stitch, every swollen lump of tissue, every patch of black and purple and yellow showed t
hrough.
“I know it looks horrible,” Julie said hastily as Alex entered with Kiki, Marty, and Gabe. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”
The statement was so unlike her, it startled Alex, snapping her mind away from the damaged face. She sounds so…beaten, she thought, and hurried to Julie’s bedside. “Don’t be silly. We’re not going anywhere. We just got here.” She sat down on the bed, carefully. “You do look pretty awful, though,” she said breezily. “If I were you, I’d ditch whatever makeup you’re using. It’s not working.” And then she held her breath, because if Julie didn’t laugh…
Julie laughed. And even though she immediately put her hands to her face because the laughter hurt, Alex relaxed a little. As long as Julie could still laugh, she’d be okay.
“Kiki,” Julie said then, “are you really dieting this time? You look thinner.”
Alex was amazed to notice that Kiki did look thinner. Not thin, but thinner. Her cheekbones were clearly visible. Maybe she’d just found a new way to apply makeup. She’s going to be really beautiful if she keeps this up, Alex thought.
But there was no dieting that day. Kiki had something in her mouth every time Alex looked at her. Cookies, chips, nuts, candy…
She’s going to eat herself right out of those jeans, Alex thought. She noticed that Kiki’s leather belt was drooping around her waist, but at the rate she was going, Alex was sure it would be strangling her by mid-afternoon.
“I’m going down to see Kyle,” Alex announced. “If they’ll let me. I can at least find out how he’s doing. Anyone want to come?”
Marty came with her. He didn’t talk on the way down to the intensive care unit, and she found herself feeling very uncomfortable. She couldn’t remember now exactly why he was mad at her. For leaving the scene last night, that she knew…but hadn’t there been something before that? She couldn’t remember what it was. And she was more concerned about Kyle right now.
They were not allowed to see him. “Only immediate family members,” the nurse told them crisply when they arrived.
That sounds familiar, Alex thought, annoyed. “Well, can you at least tell us how he is?”
“The same. No change.” And the nurse disappeared into a storage closet.
Alex was about to turn away when she saw an envelope lying on the nurse’s desk behind the tall white counter. It was large and brown. Alex could see quite clearly Kyle’s name written across the front in black.
She found herself wondering if Kyle’s things, the things he’d had on him when he got to the hospital, were in there. Had to be. It was that kind of envelope. His watch, his wallet…Why hadn’t the police taken the envelope?
Because Kyle hadn’t committed a crime, he’d been the victim of one. The police had no reason to take his things.
But Alex did. She needed to see if there was something—anything—that might help her figure out who had attacked him—and why. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but she had to see.
“What are you doing?” Marty hissed as Alex darted around the side of the high white counter and stretched out an arm to snatch up the envelope.
“Never mind. Keep an eye out for unexpected company, okay? This’ll just take a minute.”
While he watched, disbelieving, Alex yanked open the clasp on the envelope and fumbled around inside. Her fingers closed around a small, oval metal object on a chain. She peered inside and saw it was just what she’d thought. A gold football charm.
That meant one thing. The charm she’d found in the plant on the observation deck wasn’t Kyle’s. He’d been wearing his, and was still wearing it when he was admitted to the hospital’s emergency ward the night before.
The one in the plant belonged to someone else.
The question was, Who? And how long, exactly, had that football been sitting in the potted plant on the sixth-floor observation deck of the tower?
Not long, Alex was positive. Not long at all.
Without withdrawing the ornament, she re-fastened the envelope flap, put the envelope back on the desk, and grabbed Marty’s hand. “C’mon, let’s go!”
“What was that all about?” he demanded as they ran back up the stairs to Julie’s room.
“Something I needed to check out. Tell you later.” Changing the subject, she said, “What do you want to bet there isn’t a crumb of food left in Julie’s room? Kiki seems to be making up for lost time. And I’m getting hungry.”
“We go straight to Vinnie’s from here,” Marty said curtly, and Alex nodded.
When they walked into the room, Gabe was sitting on Julie’s bed, giving her a play-by-play of the game the day before, and Kiki was crumpling an empty plastic bag, preparing to toss it into the wastebasket on the opposite side of Julie’s bed.
Kiki stood up to throw.
Alex noticed as Kiki left the chair that the brown leather belt seemed to be drooping even more than it had before. Kiki must have loosened it. Couldn’t blame her. Those jeans must be getting pretty snug around the waist after all that junk food.
Kiki lifted her arm to aim the crumpled ball of cellophane and stood on tiptoe to throw. Then suddenly, she said in a startled voice, “Oh, wow,” and collapsed. Her eyes rolled back in her head, her mouth fell open, her eyes fell shut, and she slid down, landing in a heap on the floor.
Chapter 11
A TERRIBLE SENSE OF doom swept over Alex as she saw Kiki collapse. She watched with an odd sense of detachment as Kiki’s head hit the floor with a thunk, watched as her arms and legs flopped like the limbs on a rag doll.
Maybe she’s dead, she thought dispassionately, suddenly too weary to feel anything.
Alex realized then that she had made a mistake. She had thought that coming to the hospital to visit Julie, which was what you did if you happened to have a friend in the hospital, would make things seem at least a little…normal. And after everything that had happened lately, normal sounded pretty good.
But it hadn’t worked. Because here was Kiki, flopped on the floor with her eyes closed. Kiki might be a little bit different in some ways, but she didn’t usually go around fainting.
“You would think,” Alex said aloud in a strange, flat voice, “that a hospital room, of all places, would be safe. But I see that it isn’t. It just isn’t. Maybe no place is.”
Gabe and Marty bent to help Kiki. Julie pressed frantically on her call button for a nurse, her bruised eyes regarding Alex with concern. “Alex, what’s the matter? She just fainted, I think. Why are you acting so strange?”
Alex turned to face her. “Why am I acting so strange? Why am I acting so strange! You’re in the hospital and so is Kyle, and Gabe is out of the hospital but he’s on crutches, and I…” She almost said, “And I saw one of my friends get thrown off a sixth-floor observation deck last night,” but she stopped herself in time. She wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, she remembered. “How should I act?” Tears gathered in her eyes. “And now here’s Kiki, lying on the floor and for all I know, she’s dead. I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”
Kiki wasn’t dead.
“She’s fainted, that’s all,” the nurse kneeling by Kiki’s side said, looking up at Alex, who was wringing her sweatshirt in her hands. “And I know why, too,” the nurse added crisply. “Look at how loose her clothes are.” Kiki began to stir. “This girl’s been crash-dieting, I guarantee it. I’ve got a teenaged daughter who doesn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive, and I know a starvation dieter when I see one.”
“But she’s been eating all afternoon!” Alex cried.
“I’m not surprised. And I wouldn’t be surprised to hear what she’s been eating contained enough sugar to create a vat of cotton candy, am I right? Cookies, candy, cake…”
Alex nodded.
Kiki’s eyes opened.
“Right,” the nurse said. “She’s been starving herself, and today she decided to overload her system with sugar. No wonder she hit the floor. When will you girls learn? If you really want
to lose weight, you load up on fruits and veggies, some bread, a little chicken, a little fish, and you’ll lick the problem for life.”
“I hate fish,” Kiki murmured.
But she was able to leave the hospital in half an hour. She left accompanied by a stern last-minute lecture from the nurse about “proper eating habits.”
“Sorry, guys,” Kiki said when they were in the car. “I guess I scared you. Didn’t mean to. Especially you, Alex. You look terrible. You’re not going to faint, too, are you?”
“No. I’m just glad you’re okay. I couldn’t take one more person being in the hospital.”
At least, Kiki hadn’t been attacked. Alex was grateful for that much. Her “accident” had been of her own making. For just one second there, when Kiki first began to crumble, Alex had flashed back to last night and Kyle falling, falling…
But he hadn’t fallen. He’d been thrown. Big difference. And he’d been thrown, she remembered now, by someone who might have seen her watching. Alex was so thoroughly rattled that she couldn’t remember what she had planned to ask Marty. As they drove to Vinnie’s, where Kiki promised to order a healthy salad, Alex racked her brain. It had been something important, she remembered that much. Something to do with last night…
There were so many questions about last night. Which one had she planned to ask Marty?
Oh, yes. “Marty,” she said, turning toward him on the front seat, “when you first made the team, did you get one of those little gold footballs on a chain?”
“Yeah. How’d you know about those?”
Oops. She couldn’t tell him. “I saw one somewhere. Can’t remember who was wearing it. Anyway, I asked him about it, and he said all the freshman football players got them. So I just wondered. I’ve never seen, you wearing one.”
“I had it on my key chain,” he said.
Alex glanced at the keys hanging in the ignition. No tiny gold football hung there.
“Lost it,” Marty said, seeing her glance. “A while ago. It must have dropped off.”
“Where did you lose it?” she couldn’t help asking.